I can tell you I’ve enjoyed an evening without providing the postcode. I can write about someone whose company I love without volunteering them for public inspection. These are fairly ordinary freedoms; having a page on the internet has not abolished them. I enjoy sharing something of my life, and I enjoy having a life left to share something from. Curiosity is part of reading. A demand for the full itinerary is an altogether more ambitious hobby, and I have no intention of taking responsibility for it.
The selection is part of the work. A post about returning to a manuscript might include the small thing that made the afternoon pleasing, or the difficulty that held my attention. It doesn’t need the entire contents of my desk and a report on every message I answered. A story about a lovely dinner can tell you what I enjoyed about the occasion without supplying enough detail to identify everyone at the table. I want the writing to give you something worth reading. An inventory is rarely the best way to do that.
There is a practical reason for keeping certain things back, too. Real-time locations, routines and identifying details can travel further than the person sharing them intended. Once a detail has been repeated elsewhere, the original context may disappear entirely. I don’t think a personal page needs to become nervous or evasive to recognise that. It simply needs a little judgement. I can be open about my tastes, my work and the pleasure I take in both while deciding that some information isn’t useful for a public audience.
Other people deserve their own say. Someone can be important to me without having chosen a public role, and being close to a writer doesn’t automatically make a person available as material. If a shared experience is going to appear in something I publish, the details need to be considered with care. A name omitted isn’t always enough. Work, a location or a recognisable routine can identify someone just as effectively. I find it much easier to respect that before publication than to explain afterwards that I hadn’t expected anybody to notice.
I enjoy an attentive reader, and a good question can be a pleasure. The distinction is between asking and behaving as though the answer has already been purchased by showing interest. A question may be perfectly well meant and still concern something I’d rather keep to myself. That doesn’t make the rest of the writing less sincere. It means I have selected what belongs on the page, which is part of writing rather than a flaw in it. An autobiography can leave things out. A Tuesday post certainly has my permission to do the same.
Nor does paying for a piece automatically purchase its background. What is included in an offer should be clear, and any promised material should be delivered. Beyond that, a reader has bought the work described, rather than unrestricted access to the circumstances in which it was made. I rather like the straightforwardness of that. It allows the writing to be enjoyed as writing. It also leaves me free to decide later that a different detail is worth sharing, because I want to share it, rather than because a previous paragraph has somehow committed me to it.
There is plenty left once an itinerary has been removed. How someone thinks, what makes her laugh, what she notices and what she cares enough to work at can be far more revealing than the name of a restaurant. Those are the things I enjoy finding in other people’s writing. They give me a sense of a person without asking that person to give up all privacy in exchange for being interesting. I want my own work to offer that same pleasure: company on the page, with something of my life and mind in it.
Some details belong to me. I like them there. Keeping a little life off the page gives me rather more to bring to the writing than a running location report ever could.
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Additional Reading:
The Smyth Fund & Quiet Luxury: Obedience Behind Closed Doors
